Nippers clubs booming 50 years from inception

By Damien Murphy

December 18, 2015 — 7.08pm

A few months after the Pill went on sale in Australia and the last tram ran in Sydney, a bunch of blokes from Nambucca Heads met to consider how to teach local kids to survive in the dangerous surf that breaks around the mouth of the wide river that gives the NSW mid-north coast town its name.

"We'd had a few problems with rips the previous summer," Noel Crocker​ says.

He is 94 and in 1961 was the president of the Nambucca Heads Surf Life Saving Club, and remembers the October 16 annual general meeting as if it was yesterday.

"A few young ones had been swept out around Christmas 1960, and there was discussion in Rotary about what could be done. So we got together – the doctor, the barrister and other town leading lights, everybody was in the club in those days – and organised a public meeting that heard our idea of forming a branch of the surf life saving club for local youngsters.

Advertisement

Nippers from Coogee SLSC go through their Sunday morning drills and competitions.Credit:James Alcock

"It was Cyril Bannister, a delightful chap, who came up with the name. Nambucca Nippers. It rhymed, ran off the tongue like a little poem.

"The real coup was to give the kids' accreditation. Nobody likes being called Nipper, big brothers have called their little brothers that since time immemorial, but we decided to make them a part of the club from the start … the aim was to save their lives and recruit them so they became involved and stayed with the club as they got older. The name certainly stuck. First Nambucca, then the world."

Coogee Nippers take to the water at the north end.Credit:James Alcock

Since then, Nippers has evolved into Australia's biggest youth movement combining activities with community service.

They even eclipse their land-based rival, the Scouts, though Baden-Powell's organisation had a 50-year head start. Last year Scouts Australia's total membership was 69,846, 54,545 of whom were youth members.

Surf Life Saving Australia, meanwhile, claimed a national reach of 166,923 members and nearly 40 per cent of them – 62,866 – are Nippers, aged between five and 14.

Now many Sydney Nipper clubs are about to celebrate their 50th anniversaries.

Noel Crocker with an early Nambucca Nippers trophy. The 94-year-old helped start the Nippers in 1961.Credit:Rob Cleary

But surf life saving being what is is, and Nambucca Heads notwithstanding, many other areas also claim to be the Nippers' birthplace.

It's in the surf life saving movement's DNA to argue about being first: 109 years later North Bondi and Bondi SLSCs are still locked in mortal combat over the title and it is still so contentious that even Surf Life Saving NSW is too afraid to buy into the argument when explaining the moment's history on its website.

From the outset, the SLSC movement was ponderously masculine. Bathing was both segregated and banned after 7am until, one September morning in 1902, William H. Gocher​, then editor of the Manly and North Sydney News, announced to police he would enter the chilly spring breakers, clothed, at noon. When his full frontal attempt to change history went unapprehended, Australia followed Gocher into the surf and started drowning. The SLSC movement came in their wake.

Hard yakka at Coogee Nippers.Credit:Michele Mossop

But it all dissipated in the '60s. The Vietnam War, the rise of youth spending power and board riding made duty and discipline an embarrassment and turned "clubbies" into yesterday's heroes.

Memberships went into free fall and some clubs faced closure – but curiously not in Victoria or Queensland – so the movement turned to young boys.

Initially, they were taught the rudiments of surf life saving – an echo of that ethos remains in the competition against other surf life saving clubs at carnivals where children compete in beach sprints, flags, swimming and board races, relays, and march pasts, but are too young for surf skis and surf boats. All surf life saving clubs around Australia offer Nippers programs of various styles and sizes, often adapted to local needs. For instance, there is a Nippers club at Wet'n'Wild Sydney, the water park in the western suburbs at Prospect.

Surf life saving clubs started programs for boys and girls in the 1920s and 1930s. These programs operated differently at each club, with some only accepting boys while others also ran separate programs for girls.

The absence of men during World War II ended all that – until the rips and dangerous surf of Nambucca Heads made educating the youth of the area an imperative. Word must have got out that Nambucca Heads had a bunch of kids making like surf life savers because Sydney surf clubs started to follow suit.

It seems North Cronulla Nippers Club may have been first. They started in 1963 and the Coogee Minnows came the following year. Collaroy, on the northern beaches, set up in 1965. Two years later Collaroy staged the first official NSW Nipper championships and showed the shape of commercialism to come by convincing the makers of the chocolate drink Ovaltine to sponsor the titles. Some 5000 Nippers turned up on the Collaroy foreshore for the event.

The movement withered again in the 1970s, until the shellback administration bowed to modernity and admitted girls and women in 1980. It has never looked back.

Come 8am of a summer Sunday morning, there are more than 1000 kids on Coogee beach. It's a scene repeated up and down the coast, but Coogee – the beneficiary of a new era of gentrification that has brought well-heeled young families anxious to put down roots and become part of and contribute to their new community – has really exploded as a Nipper humidicrib.

Tony Waller, 53, is governor of the Coogee SLSC. He joined Coogee in 1972. His father belonged to Clovelly as a young man and reared his son on the Coogee sand. Naturally Waller's two sons followed family tradition. One of them, Matthew, won a Robertson Scholars Leadership Program Scholarship to study at Duke University in the United States.

"Nippers is a really good way of learning life skills in a free environment that helps the young become aware of their place in society while at the same time instilling a sense of responsibility that will stand them in good stead as they continue along their path of life.

"I'm sure Matthew's sense of public duty and the skills he learnt in the Nippers played an important role in his being offered the place at North Carolina," Waller said.

Many are called to Nipperdom, but few choose to join club senior ranks. Watching little kids shivering on the beach on Sunday mornings may explain the failure to stick with the programme, but dependent on volunteers and parental goodwill, Nippers are cheap to run and represent a pretty good outcome for the SLSC movement.

A Sunday in the life

Nippers are young surf lifesavers aged between 5 and 14. Unlike senior surf lifesavers, the majority do not patrol the beaches. The focus for Nippers tends to be on fun and surf awareness. Nippers learn about safety at the beach, about dangers such as rocks and animals (such as the blue-ringed octopus), and also about surf conditions, including rip currents, sandbars, and waves.

Older Nippers also learn some basic first aid and may also learn CPR when they reach the age of 13. When Nippers are 13 they can complete their SRC (Surf Rescue Certificate), which allows them to patrol beaches and take part in senior competition.

Loading

Like senior counterparts, Nippers participate in regular competition against other surf life saving clubs and at sports carnivals, in events including beach sprints, flags, swimming and board races, relays, and march past. Unlike seniors, Nippers do not compete in surf ski or surf boat races, and they also use shorter surf boards than senior counterparts. Competitions start in the under-8 age group.